In a pandemic, 34% of households stopped consuming at least one food

Natalia Muscatelli

04/28/2021 10:52

• Clarín.com

• Economy

Updated 04/28/2021 10:52

With the arrival of the pandemic and the impact of inflation eroding the pockets, in the last year, the population had to implement different

strategies to make their income yield.

One of them was to change eating habits: at this juncture,

33.8% of households stopped consuming at least one food,

according to the INDEC recently revealed in its Study on the impact of COVID-19.

This means that that portion of households

reduced the intake

of some product in the basic basket such as

beef, other meats, fresh vegetables or milk, for economic reasons

.

It happens that

the price of food has been growing above

general

inflation

.

According to official records, while retail prices rose 42.6% through March,

food increased at a rate of 44.8%.

Faced with this situation, and just to establish a relationship with income, the Minimum, Vital and Mobile Salary (SMVM), for example,

lost 15% of its purchasing power in the last 15 months.

And compared to the end of 2015, it fell by 36%.

Covid 19 impact study. Source: Indec.

Another parameter to see the evolution of food prices is the value of

beef, a staple of the local diet, which increased 75.1%

in the last twelve months,

almost double the

retail

inflation

in the same period .

Within the total number of households that chose to restrict the consumption of at least one food, the official survey found that

this measure was taken with more vehemence in the suburbs (38%) than in the City of Buenos Aires (21.2%).

Also it found that those who had to

restrict of the basket were mostly

households had a reduction in their income or labor problems (45.3%)

.

Finally, the problem affected the population with the lowest level of education the most.

In this sense, in 44.7% of the households that claimed to have made this restriction, their members

did not have complete secondary education

.

The INDEC work was done between August and October 2020 with information from the homes of

Greater Buenos Aires (Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and suburbs of Buenos Aires).

According to the official study, this strategy carried out during the pandemic is in addition to others that consumers had to take to cope with the crisis situation.

Debt, savings and sale of property

Among the alternatives to which the families appealed is

indebtedness

(they did not pay services or outstanding bills), which reached 41.5% of households;

obtaining new income or advance requests

in assets (29.2%) and finally the use of “stock”.

In other words, the need for people to implement or resort more frequently

to savings or the sale of belongings

since the pandemic began.

According to the study by the body directed by Marco Lavagna, 70.6% of the households surveyed on this occasion had to resort to at least one of these strategies to keep their finances up to date.

Of this group, more than half (58.3%) also received assistance from the State and community organizations.

This assistance was carried out through a direct transfer of income (IFE, ATP, bonds for the security forces, health personnel and retirees) or food (lunch or school basket or attendance at the dining room after the pandemic).

Among the households that reported using

only one strategy (24.6%), it was observed that the most used method was the use of savings

or the sale of belongings (50.1%).

For those households that reside in CABA, the percentage rose to 62.9%, with more than 17 points of difference with respect to those who live in the Buenos Aires suburbs (45.3%), the statistical agency reported.

NE

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